The technology relates to a vehicle surroundings monitoring apparatus that performs image display related to information on a situation of surroundings of a vehicle such as an automobile.
A vehicle such as an automobile which performs automatic driving may have an automatic driving system based on a premise that an occupant of the vehicle takes over a driving operation and performs manual driving in the event of an emergency or any other situation. The vehicle having the foregoing system may require the occupant to constantly monitor a situation of surroundings of the own vehicle and thereby determine, where appropriate, reasonableness of an automatic driving control and necessity of taking over the driving operation, i.e., whether it is possible to continue the automatic driving, for example. The occupant may be a driver at the time of manual driving, for example.
Various assist systems have been proposed that each provide an occupant of a vehicle such as an automobile with information on an environment of surroundings of the own vehicle, by means of image display or any other method.
For example, the technique disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication (JP-A) No. 2010-165087 provides display units such as a side mirror, a rear-view mirror, a meter, and a navigation device of a vehicle. When a determination is made, on the basis of an image capturing a driver, that the driver is gazing at specific vehicle equipment having a display for a predetermined reference time period or longer, the display of the specific vehicle equipment displays a forward image of the vehicle.
JP-A No. 2011-230563 discloses a narrow road traveling assist apparatus that displays together, on a monitor, an image including a region ahead of an own vehicle and an image including a region on the left side of the own vehicle and a region on the right side of the own vehicle.
JP-A No. 2013-46124 discloses a driving assist apparatus that provides a rearward image of the own vehicle.
JP-A No. 2008-157880 discloses a driving assist apparatus that causes an image that has been captured during outward traveling to be displayed on part of a display during homeward traveling.